


Amidst the Drifting Snow

by Arej



Series: Ineffable Advent 2019 [2]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 31 Days of Ineffables, Absolute fluff, Developing Relationship, Fluff, Holding Hands, M/M, Other, the two of them are painfully soft, they're not really male but it's m/m since i used male pronouns throughout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-25 22:40:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21653137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arej/pseuds/Arej
Summary: Day 2 from the advent calendar of prompts.Winter is hard on Crowley, and he's very much not a fan. Luckily Aziraphale has an idea that may change the way Crowley thinks about snow.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Ineffable Advent 2019 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561027
Comments: 20
Kudos: 174





	Amidst the Drifting Snow

“This had better be important, angel,” Crowley mutters to himself, steering the Bentley around a gaggle of pedestrians. They look more like marshmallows, if he’s honest - hardly worth the effort of dodging. With all that cold weather padding, they’d bounce right off. Wouldn’t even leave a scratch.

He hasn’t hit anyone yet - bicycle girl doesn’t count, no matter _what_ face Aziraphale makes when the subject arises - but the mental image of overswaddled pedestrians struggling to right themselves like stuffed turtles is amusing enough to be worth considering, even if ultimately he admits the chuckle wouldn’t be worth the fuss.

He’s nine blocks past the last pedestrian swarm, anyway.

“ _Oh, do come over, Crowley. There’s something I simply_ must _show you,_ ” he mocks in his best Aziraphale impression. It’s getting better, slowly. He drops the impression to scowl out the windscreen at the slate sky over a familiar roofline. “As if he doesn’t know I’m holing up for the winter. All this blasted cold.”

He parks the Bentley in her customary spot outside the bookshop, flings open the door, and blesses violently at the blast of frigid air that rushes in. His half-numb fingers fumble the bakery box, which bobbles; it abruptly rights himself when he hisses at it. He scoops up the two compliant takeaway cups and slithers out of the rapidly cooling cab. Hands occupied, he nudges the Bentley’s door with his hip; it shuts obligingly, well-behaved as ever.

The steps up into the shop are treacherously icy - he’d approve, if they weren’t attempting to trip _him_. The door swings open just in time for him to turn his stumble into a suave slide over the threshold.1

“Oi, angel!” Crowley calls, hip-checking the door shut and switching the sign over to ‘closed’ for good measure. Why Aziraphale is even open in this weather, with the stairs in such a state, is -

Ah. Right. Anti-customer measures.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale’s voice drifts from the stacks. “Be right there, my dear!”

“Asks me over in the freezing cold just to make me wait,” Crowley grouses vaguely to the shop, not unkindly. The low lights twinkle back at him, as if in agreement. “Clearly a desperately urgent matter.”

“If it had been urgent, you wouldn’t have stopped for pastries,” Aziraphale snipes back with a grin, lifting the bakery box from Crowley’s outstretched hand and popping the lid. A waft of warm cinnamon and ginger escapes on a cloud of steam. The box had known better than to chill on the drive over.

“Gingerbread?” The angel asks, sampling the fragrant steam with closed eyes, and Crowley can’t help the fond smile that sneaks across his face.

“Of a sort. Gingerbread bread pudding, from that little place by mine.”

“Oooh.” Aziraphale closes the lid, takes the cup Crowley offers him. Sips. Makes a face. “I believe this is yours, dear.”

Crowley swaps the cups and drowns the rush of embarrassment with a swallow of his syrupy sweet vanilla caramel latte - with extra whipped cream. Aziraphale, gracefully, doesn’t comment, this time or any of the other moments Crowley has let slip his not-so-secret-anymore preference for sweets post Armageddon’t. Part of him is waiting for the angel to say something, anything - not judgment, necessarily, but some sort of comment, at least.

Instead, Aziraphale wriggles the bakery box and turns toward the back room. “You shouldn’t have, my dear boy.”

Crowley scoffs. “As if I’d show up here without something in hand for anything less than a full-blown - what…”

The sight of the back room stops his mouth, and his tracks.

If the lights in the shop proper had twinkled, they must have learned it here: fairy lights drape along the top edges of the bookshelves and crisscross the ceiling, casting a warm glow over an expanse of white. There is - something - where Crowley knows a sofa and an armchair and a varied clutter of tables usually sit, and it looks like an expanse of -

“Is that - is that _snow_?” he manages, bewildered, just as Aziraphale settles the bakery box atop a snow drift where a table should be, and he realizes. He steps to the edge of the field of white, reaches out - and rubs his fingers across a bunched mound of white fabric. Gathers a handful of it and _pulls_ , and the whole mound shifts with it. “What…”

“Blankets. They’re all blankets,” Aziraphale answers. When Crowley looks up, the angel’s eyes are sparkling in the glow of the fairy lights, his face bathed in warm radiance, a hesitant smile on his lips. “I know you hate the cold dreadfully, dearest. But snow is just so picturesque, and you look so striking against it, and I thought it might be nice if we could have the aesthetic without you having to suffer the chill.”

Crowley is…speechless. His fingers rub idly over the blanket mound, soft and fluffy in the way real snow so rarely is, and the perfect shade of white, too. There are blankets everywhere, now that he knows what he’s looking at - draped artfully across the standing furniture, sofa and chair and tables obscured but unmoved. They’re spread across the floor and bunched up at the base of the bookshelves, adorned with a number of unfamiliar lumps he suspects are just blankets piled on blankets to imitate snowdrifts pretending to hide furniture that doesn’t exist. And his angel, there in the center, soft browns and creams and gentle blues on a soft white backdrop, just a shade off from his cloudfluff curls, smiling anxiously, nervous fingers tugging at the bottom of his waistcoat.

When he finally finds his voice it’s low and soft and nothing like the forced casualness he had been intending. Probably for the best, that.

“You did all this for - for me?”

Aziraphale’s anxious smile softens into a real one, the sort that lights him up from the inside, and Crowley feels an answering light click on in his chest. And suddenly the angel is there, taking his hand, tugging him forward - Crowley focuses just enough to remember to vanish his shoes before stepping onto a plush pseudo-winter wonderland. When he checks, Aziraphale, too, is barefoot, angelic toes curling into the blankets as he leads the demon back to center.

“Of course.”

The voice is quiet, but the words are loud; they rattle around in Crowley’s chest, bang against his ribs, wedge themselves under his breastbone to make a home there. _Of course._

Like it’s nothing. Like it’s everything.

And it is.

“That’s what the season is supposed to be all about, really,” Aziraphale continues, unaware of how his words are dismantling something in Crowley, stripping away the walls, exposing the deep, soft underbelly of him. “Being together. I just can’t bear the thought of you suffering through the season, all alone, not when - not when I can do something. When I can fix it.”

It’s new, this thing they have together. It’s new and, Crowley thought, fragile; as fragile as real, fresh fallen snow. But here, now, standing amidst the blanket drifts, barefoot and hand in hand with his angel, Crowley realizes: it’s not fragile at all. It’s sturdy, it’s stable. A rock.

A foundation, to build their future on.

Crowley folds, both metaphorically and physically; tucks his knees, mindful of the cup in his left hand, and tugs until the angel follows him down. Until they’re both settled there against the faux drifts, warm drinks held close, hands held closer. Surrounded by light, and warmth, and promise.

“I love it,” he admits, and when the admission turns Aziraphale’s megawatt smile to a blinding brightness, he folds further. Adds, in a voice gone so soft it’s barely there, “I love you.”

Aziraphale shuffles closer, until their knees knock together, shifts their hands so that his thick fingers fill the empty spaces between Crowley’s warming digits. Rocks up to press a kiss to the snake tattoo on his temple. Smiles.

“I love you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1Not suave at all. But thankfully Aziraphale isn’t looking, anyway.^


End file.
